


Print the Legend

by Deifire



Category: Thelma and Louise (1991)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Ghost Stories, References to Canon-Typical Violence, road ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: They say you'll see 'em sometimes out there on the road. Call 'em ghosts or spirits or avenging angels. Two redheaded women in a green 1966 Ford Thunderbird...





	Print the Legend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



**Excerpts from the Sawyer-Dickinson Project Transcripts, Interviews #1-31**

**Interview 1**  
**Josie, 26, park ranger**

It was Thelma who said it. 'Something's crossed over in me,' she said. 'I can't go back. _We_ can't go back. Let's keep driving.' And Louise put the pedal to the floor and they did. Drove to the edge and just kept going. And something—call it God, fate, the universe, whatever— _something_ was watching that day, and something heard her. Because they did cross over. Into something else. A new kind of existence. And they're still out there driving.

They say you'll see 'em sometimes out there on the road. Call 'em ghosts or spirits or avenging angels. Two redheaded women in a green 1966 Ford Thunderbird. They say there's two kinds of people they'll appear to most often. Women in need and the men they need protecting from. And woe be unto to you if you're one of the latter.

Least, that's how I heard it.

***

**Interview 5**  
 **Lee, 19, student**

Okay, so there's this guy, right? He goes to prison for being a rapist or a murderer or maybe a rapist _and_ a murderer, but anyways, he escapes one day and he's hitchhiking. And I forgot to say, he's definitely killing people after that. After the escape. Because it's women who remind him of the ones whose testimony got him convicted, right? So anyway, he's already killed, like, three times before these two women in a green Thunderbird stop to give him a ride. And he gets in their car…and then he's never seen or heard from again.

No, wait. He is. They do find his body the next day in a truck stop parking lot, shot full of holes. Only, get this: the police do some tests and figure out the bullets came from Thelma Dickinson's exact gun. Creepy, right?

The other one I've heard is about the guy who was beating his wife and kids. They try to escape one day, only he finds out and drives after them. Then on this back road? He's nearly caught up with them when this ghostly fog comes up out of nowhere. And then, suddenly—bam! right behind him—headlights. The headlights a 1966 Thunderbird, to be specific. And he tries and he tries, but he can't lose this car. It just keeps getting closer and closer and closer…

They find what's left of him wrapped around a telephone pole about 30 miles outside of Springfield.

That's the story I heard, anyway.

***

**Interview 7**  
 **Rochelle, 37, graphic designer**

What I heard is that you can call them if you need to. A bottle of Wild Turkey buried at a crossroads. Or just libations poured out as a sacrifice on any section of the open road. Sometimes they'll just appear. To a hitchhiking woman, or a woman in a little bit of trouble who needs help. They'll give her a ride to wherever she's going, maybe a few bucks for a meal or a room for the night.

The story usually goes that the woman gets dropped off at a diner or someplace like that and she has no idea what she's just experienced until she tells the waitress or someone about the two nice ladies in the convertible who stopped to give her a ride. And then the whole place gets dead quiet and she starts to get a little nervous and then somebody tells her the story of Thelma and Louise…

***

**Interview 10**  
 **Alyx, 45, adjunct professor**

Certainly, the legend is based on a true story. There was a real Thelma Dickinson and a real Louise Sawyer. They each lived a real life and died a real death there at the Grand Canyon. But in a larger sense, the mythology that surrounds them, that's bigger than any two mortal women. Their story—their sacrifice—belongs to all of us. Any woman who's ever been hurt or abused. Anyone who's ever raged against the patriarchy. Any woman who ever just wanted to be a little more free than our society allows.

In my full moon ritual group, we sometimes call upon Thelma and Louise as aspects of the sacred feminine. They embody the warrior goddess. The goddess as avenger. She who cannot be disempowered. She who cannot be controlled.

***

**Interview 11**  
 **Lena, 63, waitress**

Nah, they weren't killers. Or avengers, or anything like that. They were never the killing type, and I say that now even after knowing the truth about what happened to Harlan Puckett that night in the parking lot. Sometimes people get put in bad situations, and sometimes other people get what's coming to 'em. That's all. We get women in here from time to time just 'cause they know this is the place where it all started. Some a little lost, some just looking for an excuse to raise a little hell. 

They've got this sort of ritual toast they do now, mostly with Wild Turkey, and we figure it can't hurt for 'em to ask the ladies for a little help. A little extra protection to get 'em safe to where they're going, even if where they're going is just back home after a night on the town.

The closest I ever heard to anything like the stories you're talking about is what happened to this one gal who stopped in here on her way back up north. That night, she was looking to escape a bad situation with a not-quite-ex husband through the middle of a January snowstorm. We tried to talk her out of it, but she left as soon as there was a break in the weather long enough she thought she might make it. She called a couple days later, after it was all over. Claimed she'd followed the taillights of a green Thunderbird the whole way back up to her mother's.

The asshole was following her the whole time, as it turns out. He didn't make it. But what do you expect when a guy is driving like a bat out of hell on four balding tires over black ice? Nothing supernatural about that.

But who's to say? I've been a waitress in a bar most of my life. Can't say I've ever seen a ghost, but I've seen a lot of people.

***

**Interview 14**  
 **Alice, 29, state trooper**

Ah, the Thunderbird. Yeah, I've seen it. I think everybody out here has at one time or another. But that's the deal with roads. You drive enough of them enough times and you're gonna see some stuff. Your ghost truckers, your phantom carriages, your vanishing hitchhikers. 

Dickinson and Sawyer are pretty polite as far as ghost drivers go. They don't hurt nobody who don't hurt them and they obey traffic laws and speed limits for the most part. That manhunt ended a long time ago. Nowadays, we just figure we have our job and they have theirs and there's only so much damage a phantom car can do anyway. We know to just let 'em go about their business.

Well, most of us know that.

***

**Interview 18**  
 **Lloyd, 45, paranormal investigator**

Sawyer and Dickinson have had, let's see…seventeen different documented encounters with law enforcement in the years following their deaths. 

In some of them, our ghosts are benign or even helpful. Like in '97, when officers in rural Arkansas reported pursuing a speeding green '66 Thunderbird that vanished into thin air just before they came across scene of a three-car accident. They arrived in time to save a six-year-old girl's life, something that might not have happened if they hadn't been out there on that stretch of road right then chasing ghosts.

Some are even kind of funny. In 2003, state troopers in Arizona found one of their colleagues locked in his own trunk after—he claims—being robbed at gunpoint by our ladies. Which echoes an event that actually occurred in New Mexico during the original pursuit. Except in our case, when our trooper was found, they'd also taken his pants.

And some are like what happened to our good friend Officer Johnson here. **[Note: Here interviewee describes the dashcam footage from item #3A in Video Evidence.]** See, here, he's pulled the car over. 1966 Ford Thunderbird with what appears to be two women behind the wheel. No plates. We don't get a good look at their faces, but if you go frame-by-frame…here. Right here starting at 1:09? See how the car is semi-transparent? You can see the highway and the side of the road _through_ the vehicle for about next two seconds. Now, in real time, our officer doesn't appear to notice…here he approaches the car…here he's talking to the driver…and then suddenly…nothing but static for the next two minutes and ten seconds. I'm gonna fast forward through this part…anyway, by the time the static clears and the image is back…see? The Thunderbird's gone and so is our man Johnson.

To this very day, as it turns out. They found his patrol car on the side of the road, but no other sign of him. It was after his disappearance that the stuff you heard on the news started to surface. The prisoner abuse, the bribes…I mean, all of that was an entire small town police department full of corruption, not just this one guy, but then there was the way he treated his wife and kids…

Y'know, I'm not sure from the evidence if Sawyer and Dickinson deserve the reputation they've gotten as man-hating spirits, but to the extent they do, it usually turns out that damned if some man didn't give them a reason.

***

**Interview 21**  
 **C.J., 54, trucker**

Nah, I don't believe for a second they're haunting us 'cause they hate men. Well, I guess I can't say I know for sure about Louise, but a buddy of mine, Mike, spent the night with Thelma once back in '95. Now, I know what you're thinking. It sounds a little weird given that she'd been about four years dead at that point, but to hear him tell it, she was just a beautiful woman he met in the parking lot of a Denny's. She looked cold so he lent her his jacket and brought her some dinner. They got to talking and really hit it off, so he wound up taking her back to his motel room and they spent the night together. 

Now, he never was one to kiss and tell in any kind of detail, but "cold hands, warm heart" and "best night of my life" came up more than once. She left the next morning with a friend of hers, another redhead. They both waved at him from the car as they drove away, and that was the last he ever saw of her.

It wasn't until years later when he was watching some news program that he finally put it together. He still won't hear a bad word about either one of those women. Truth to tell, I think he's still in love with her just a little bit.

***

**Interview 22**  
 **Michael, 55, spiritual counselor**

Thelma Dickinson was and is one of God's angels walking the Earth, and that's all I have to say about that.

***

**Interview 26**  
 **Joanne, 41, teacher**

Honestly, right now I can't even believe I let my friends talk me into talking to you. This is kind of embarrassing. I mean, it isn't even a good ghost story. 

Okay, what happened was that in college I had this old Honda that was always breaking down. The day it died for good, I was on my way home for Thanksgiving and there I was, stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, when these two ladies in a green convertible stopped and gave me a ride. And, yeah, they said their names were Louise and Thelma and that matches the story, but it wasn't spooky or anything. They were really nice. 

They said they were on a road trip. I remember because that was the first time I thought about taking some time and doing something like that with _my_ best friend. We tried to plan it for years, but with kids and life and everything, it just kind of never happened. Anyway, that was the year that one Shania Twain song was on the radio all the time and I remember the three of us singing along to it. 

When they dropped me off, they gave me money for the tow truck and to get a burger while I was waiting and wouldn't hear of me paying them back. Thelma just said when I could, I should help out someone else who needed it. And that's why I don't think mine is even a ghost story. I mean, where would a ghost get money?

***

**Interview 27**  
 **Cathy, 27, cashier**

She seemed like a nice lady until she pulled out the gun. And even then, she seemed like a nice enough robber until she walked right through the Little Debbie display. Like she wasn't even solid. That's how I knew there was something really freaky going on. But she could pick up the bottle of Wild Turkey and bag full of money when we handed it to her, though, so I'm not even sure how that worked. Wasn't taking a chance on whether or not the bullets from that gun could do damage, I'll tell you that much.

She said if we did what she told us we'd have an amazing story to tell all our friends, and sure enough, to this day, I do. I mean, how many people can say they were held at gunpoint by a ghost?

***

**Interview 30**  
 **Jimmy, 60, semi-retired**

Yeah, I've heard the stories like everybody else and, yeah, every once in a while someone like you comes here to ask me about 'em. I don't know what to tell you. Louise is gone. Louise has been gone for a long damned time.

I suppose in my heart of hearts, it's nice to think of her still out there somewhere on the open road. Driving that car she loved so much, hair flying in the wind, free for the rest of fucking ever.

But, no. If there is any sort of afterlife, I suppose I'd rather believe she's crossed over to somewhere else. She ain't here, still dealing with this world and its same bullshit. She and Thelma are at peace.

That's a better story, don't you think?

***

**Interview 31**  
 **Callie, 34, researcher**

This is a little strange, being interviewed for my own project like this. I started working on the Sawyer-Dickinson thing about a year ago. I've always been kind of fascinated with ghost stories and American folklore, but until now, I've never had any stories of my own. I'm still not sure what I do have. What happened was this: I'd been drinking a lot of coffee. My interviewee was thirty minutes late, and I went to use the ladies' room and left my bag in the booth. Yeah, I should have known better. I don't know what I was thinking. That the waitress would watch it, I guess? No, truth told, I _wasn't_ thinking. I was just tired and irritated that this guy was standing me up again. Anyway, I came out and the bag was gone, along with my computer, my notes, my phone, my wallet. My papers. All the transcripts I'd typed up so far.

I had just enough gas to make it home, so after I reported it, that's where I started going. I stopped at a rest stop about twenty miles or so down the road. Like I said, I had a lot of coffee. I know I locked the car doors before I went inside. I swear it. My days of trusting people were over. But when I came out, my bag was there on the front passenger seat. Everything in it, even the forty bucks in cash the wallet. And this sticky note attached to the top of my papers. Print the Legend, it says. **[Note: See evidence file, Item #18.]** And when I went to transcribe the next set of interviews, I found this:

 **[Note: What follows is a transcript of the recording played by interviewee. The individuals heard on said recording will be referred to here as Speaker 1 (S1) and Speaker 2 (S2).]**

**S1:** Okay. Name? Thelma. Age?...Shit, what year is this? Twenty sixt-, no, seven-, eighteen? Let's just say I haven't had to worry about my age in a long time. Next is occupation. That's another tough one. Let's go with outlaw. Yeah, that's— 

**S2:** Thelma, what are you doing fooling with that thing?

 **S1:** Giving an interview.

 **S2:** Why?

 **S1:** I don't know. To set the record straight? I'm answering everything on this list of questions.

 **S2:** Again, why?

 **S1:** Why not? The people working on this stuff spent the last year or so of their lives trying to find out the truth about us. Least we could do is give it to 'em.

 **S2:** They're not looking for the truth. They're looking for the legend. See here? They say they're gonna publish the legend. Can you believe some of this bullshit? 'The goddess as avenger' my ass.

 **S1:** So? There's worse things to be called than a goddess. And some of it's true. Well, mostly true.

 **S2:** [audible sigh] Some of it is…somewhat true.

 **S1:** Besides, the legend's prettier. Neater, somehow.

 **S2:** You're right. Legend's prettier.

 **S1:** You ever think about contacting Jimmy?

 **S2:** Hell, no. Why would I want to do that?

 **S1:** Let him know you're happy. Let him know you can cross over any time, you just never want to stay. You always want to keep going.

 **S2:** So do you. And, no. That man has a life now. Why would I want to mess that up for him?

 **S1:** I don't think it would—

 **S2:** Yeah, it would. We made the choice to leave our lives behind a long time ago. Besides, nobody wants to know what's on the other side. Let it be.

 **S1:** Louise, _everyone_ wants to know what's on the other side. Why not say it here? You could tell 'em that we—

That's where it cuts off. From here on out, there's just static. We've had handwriting experts weigh in, tried speaker recognition software, and well, you've seen the results. **[Note: See evidence file, items #19-25.]** But nobody's willing to say for sure if I had a quasi-encounter with our subjects or just a visit from a couple of pranksters pulling one hell of a prank. I don't even know if this part should go into the book. But there it is. That's my story. 

***

**Work on the Sawyer-Dickinson Project is ongoing.**


End file.
